This Min SAS 4i (SFF-8087) connector has eight signal pins to support four SATA drives and six pins for the SGPIO (Serial General Purpose Input/Output) side-band signals. RAID: RAID level 0, 1, 1E, 3, 5, 6 (if RAID 6 engine supported) and JBOD.
GOOD: 16 drives, easy to upgrade RAM, good design by Areca. RAID arrays are compatible with the the other RAID controllers withing this family.
NOT SO GOOD: It;s an older product and doesn't support SATA 3. However, it support drives over 2TB,
Bottom line: it is a great piece of hardware RAID for storage, where volume is more important than performance. Great functionality for the price.
Its a great deal to pick up one of these used. They are pretty reliable and more flexible than using a Dell Perc card.
The pre boot UI is easy to use and it took all of 2 minutes to configure it for JBOD.
Its a little slow on boot but most are.
Im currently using it in JBOD with a 24TB Linux RaidZ3 on a custom server.
I especially like that the serial numbers are reported in the UI so that you can map the cables to the correct swap bay.